


Anterograde

by The_StonedSoldier



Category: Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Amnesia, Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, Fluff, Hallucinations, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-27
Updated: 2014-06-10
Packaged: 2018-01-26 18:28:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 20,722
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1698260
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_StonedSoldier/pseuds/The_StonedSoldier
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Anterograde - A form of amnesia which involves inability to remember information encountered after its onset.</p><p>Two weeks after the events of CA:TWS, Steve managed to find Bucky and bring him back to his apartment before cutting off almost all communication with the rest of the avengers for a month. Now Natasha and Clint want to know everything that's been going on, and the truth is far from what they anticipated.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [DoYouEvenSlash](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DoYouEvenSlash/gifts).



"Remind me again why we're doing this?" 

Steve gazed around the sitting room of Natasha's apartment. He'd been here once or twice before, but only for brief visits. Today however, Nat had invited him over for what she liked to call a 'girls night in', which seemed a strange description seeing as he and Clint outnumbered her. 

"We're doing this because I need an update on the Bucky situation." Nat said casually, her gaze not moving from the TV. Steve had never seen her dressed this casually. In just a red tank top and grey pyjama shorts, she seemed a far cry from the trained assassin he usually saw. 

"The 'Bucky situation'? I... I don't..."

"She means have you fucked him yet." Clint explained, emerging from the kitchen with a bowl of popcorn in one hand and a bottle of wine in the other. 

"Clint!" Natasha slapped his arm as he sat down but he just shrugged nonchalantly. Steve shuffled awkwardly on the floor and glanced at his phone, praying it would ring with an urgent mission so he could leave.

"So, Steve." Damn "What I meant was that I haven't seen either of you in weeks so I want an update on how he's doing, how you two are getting on..."

"And if you've fucked yet."

" **Clint!** " This time Nat whacked him full on in the chest, making him choke on his popcorn.

"I can't believe after everything he's been going through you just want to know if I've fucked him!" Steve blurted out, just as shocked by his own outburst as they looked. He looked down at the floor and tried to ignore the blush creeping onto his face.

"Steve... we didn't..." Nat started but Steve just waved his hand. 

"It's fine. You finished with that?"  He gestured to the bottle in Clint's hand. Clint handed it down to him and he took a swig. It was pretty cheap wine but Steve was  just desperate for a way to change the subject, although he knew it was too late for that now. "So do you guys ever bother with glasses or do you always drink your booze straight from the bottle?"

"Doesn't usually last long enough to warrant glasses." Clint responded. Nat smirked and Steve couldn't help but smile, but he knew this was never going to distract them from Bucky, may as well get it over with.

"So, what do you want to know?" He asked, taking another swig of wine. It really was grim. They both looked taken aback.

"Um, well... we don't really know anything since..."

"He's been rough." Steve interrupted her.

"You know, Steve, the main purpose of a girl's night is to let out your feelings."

"So?"

"So tell us everything, you'll feel better" Steve took a deep breath and thought, trying to decide where to begin.

***

He had been a little disappointed that Bucky didn't comment when they walked into the apartment.

"You must remember this place, right?" He encouraged. Bucky looked at him blankly and then gazed around the room again. Steve could see the desperate concentration on his face and was about to tell him not to worry when he spoke.

"I... I think... Wait." He looked at him. "You kept our old apartment?"

"What were you expecting? A mansion with the stars and stripes painted on the front?" It was the first time he'd seen Bucky smile in a long time, and it made him happier than he cared to admit.

"I just didn't think it would still be here."

"Well there was a little family living here when I came back, and it turned out they were planning on moving so..." Steve trailed off when he saw Bucky wasn't paying much attention, and was looking around the room again.

"We had a different couch?" He phrased it almost like a question and looked at Steve with uncertainty.

"Yeah, this one is actually structurally sound."  Bucky smiled at him again, and for a few hours everything felt normal again. Everything was perfect.

***

Steve couldn't remember the first incident exactly. It had all happened so quickly he hadn't really had time to process it.  
He had been sitting on the couch trying to catch up on all the DC movies he'd missed - he didn't feel quite as lost having read a few of the comics growing up.

"Marvel's still way better." Bucky had commented when Steve first turned it on.

"Are you kidding me? It's no contest."

"Right, call me when the produce anything close to the X-Men. Everyone knows Wolverine could kick Batman's ass."

"Bruce Wayne is still cooler than Logan."

"Bruce Wayne bought his powers, Logan was born awesome. Besides, Marvel based a character off you, you should show some gratitude."

"That's exactly why I prefer DC."

"Dumbass."

Steve smiled to himself, realising he hadn't taken in the last ten minutes of the movie at all. He reached over for the remote when suddenly the screams started.

"Get away from me!" He heard Bucky yell from his bedroom. Heart racing, Steve grabbed his shield from where it stood propped against the wall, and burst into Bucky's room.  
Bucky was standing in the middle of the room clutching tightly onto a table lamp, swinging it frantically at thin air and ducking as if something were swinging back. Steve grabbed him by the shoulders to try and calm him down and just managed to duck in time as Buck swung the lamp around, screaming hysterically. When he locked eyes with Steve he stopped, dropping the lamp and letting it crash to the ground, terror frozen on his face.

"They've come for me, they've come to take me back!" He trembled, his voice cracking a little.

"Who's come for you?"

"Them you idiot!" Bucky pointed behind him and Steve looked around the empty room, ignoring the sick feeling in his gut. Bucky was shaking and tears were starting to well up in his eyes, and any last doubt Steve had that this was some kind of stupid joke vanished completely, Bucky was terrified.

"I don't want to go back, Steve... they'll make me forget again and I don't want to..."

"Buck... there's nobody here except us." Steve tried to make himself sound calm. Bucky stared at him and the fear in his eyes quickly turned to anger.

"What the hell are you talking about!? They're all over the..." He turned around and froze as he scanned the room. "They were there. I know they were there." He turned back to Steve, new fear fresh on his face. "They smashed through the window."  
They both looked over at the bedroom window, which remained intact.

"The window's fine, Bucky."

"They cut my arm."  The desperation in his best friend's voice was painful. He almost wished it were true, it would have been easier to deal with a few Hydra soldiers than with whatever was going on in Bucky's head.

"Show me."

"You don't believe me." Bucky looked visibly hurt and Steve frowned.

"I just want to see how bad they hurt you... in case we need to bandage it up." He lied. Bucky nodded, although he didn't look particularly convinced, and examined his arm.

"It's gone." He said, defeated. "But I swear..."

"Bucky..."

"No really..."

"Bucky, you hallucinated it." The look on Bucky's face sent a pang of guilt through him and he instantly wished he'd been less blunt about it.  
He had expected Bucky to storm off or shout some kind of argument back at him, what he hadn't expected was that he would fling his arms around Steve and bury his face his chest. Instinctively he wrapped his arms around his friend and he felt the cool metal of Bucky's hand pull them closer together.

"I'm going crazy." He whispered, clinging on to Steve almost painfully tightly.

"You went through 70 years of brainwashing, you can't expect that to go away overnight."  He had hoped that might make his friend at least smile, but instead it had the opposite effect and Bucky started sobbing quietly. Steve swallowed hard and stroked Bucky's hair, which was usually a sure fire way to calm Bucky down, but it didn't seem to have much of an effect this time. "We'll work this out, Bucky, I promise."

"It was supposed to be okay now... everything was gonna be okay." That sentence hit Steve like a canon ball.

"Bucky has this... has this happened before?" Steve had no idea what Bucky had been doing in the two weeks it took him and Sam to track him down, and the thought of his best friend being lost in the middle of nowhere with no idea what was real and what wasn't hurt like hell.

"I don't know. I didn't have someone to tell me what was real and what was just my imagination." Bucky started sobbing even harder and Steve sighed. He guided them both down to the ground and leant his head against the wall, going back to stroking Bucky's hair.

"We'll work this out." He said again.


	2. Chapter 2

"It was the first time I'd seen him cry." Steve confessed as he took a swig of wine and handed the bottle back up to Natasha. "Since we were kids I mean."

"So what did you do after that?" Clint pressed, keen to get back to Steve's story. Steve shrugged.

"I told him what I just told you."

***

"I've never seen you cry before."

"Steve I was the wimpiest kid ever what are you talking about." Bucky didn't look up when he spoke. They had been sitting on the bedroom floor for the past half hour, although Bucky broke their hug after ten minutes and was now slumped against the bed, staring at the ground. 

"Wimpier than me?"

"I was the second wimpiest kid ever." Steve thought he saw his mouth twitch into a smile for a second, or it could have just been wishful thinking. 

Bucky was wrong about being a wimpy kid though. He'd just had a tendency to bottle everything up until, once they were on their own, he broke down completely, although more often than not he'd be crying about everything people had been saying about Steve rather than himself.

"But seriously, the last time I saw you cry was when we were 12, and you fell of a swing set and broke your elbow." That time Steve was certain Bucky smiled.

"That was the worst pain I have ever experienced. Frankly I'm glad that arm's gone now." He said, glancing down at his metal arm. Steve chuckled. 

"How does it work? The arm that is... Tony was pretty intrigued when he saw it."

"Tony?" Bucky sounded confused. Steve frowned. After he'd found Bucky he'd gone straight to Tony to see if he could put a few good words out about the Winter Soldier among some of his military friends to make sure they didn't suddenly find themselves being taken hostage... or worse... so why didn't he remember?

"Yeah... you met him yesterday, remember?" Bucky stared at him for a moment and then put his head in his hands, letting out an exasperated sigh. Steve wanted to try and help jog his memory but he could see how hard he was trying to think, so he stayed quiet. 

"He was an asshole." Bucky said quietly after a few moments, and Steve felt a wave of relief wash over him. 

"He takes some getting used to."

"I think he was pretty peeved my whole body wasn't made out of metal so he could examine me head to toe."

"No, if that was the case he'd see you as competition." As soon as he said it he realised Bucky didn't actually know about iron man. He saw Bucky raise an eyebrow at him and grinned. "Come on, I'll show you something to make him seem like an even bigger ass." He lead Bucky over to the computer and pulled up a few old pieces of iron man footage for them to watch.

"I'm getting the overwhelming urge to challenge him to an arm wrestle." Bucky remarked, resting his chin on Steve's shoulder to get a better view of the screen. As Bucky's cheek brushed against his lightly he felt a familiar knot in his stomach. The same knot he felt that one night when he'd been feeling more down than usual and had gone over to Bucky's in the middle of the night, and he'd smiled and hugged him and told him crappy jokes until he'd forgotten all about why he was upset. The same knot he'd felt that winter when Bucky forgot to pay the heating bill, so for a whole week he insisted they share a bed so Steve didn't freeze to death. The same knot he'd felt when he'd been in the hospital with pneumonia for the hundredth time and Bucky has kissed his cheek as he hugged him goodnight, and promised to bring him some of his mom's brownies in the morning as long as he agreed to keep fighting.   
If Bucky wasn't right next to him Steve would have slammed his head into the table for being such an idiot. His best friend had been put through pain he couldn't even imagine, was struggling and fighting his way back to some kind of normality, and yet all Steve could think about was how the lighting in the room was bringing out the green in Bucky's usually blue-grey eyes. 

"What do you think?"

"...Huh?" Steve had been so wrapped up in his own stupid thoughts he hadn't even realised his friend had been talking to him. Bucky narrowed his eyes. 

"Dude, how long have you been zoned out?"

"I wasn't..." Bucky gave him an unconvinced look and he sighed in defeat. "How long have you been talking?"

"Five minutes. It's a shame really, you missed out on some comedy gold while you were in dream land."

"Of course."

"I don't appreciate your tone. Anyway I asked you who you think would win in a fight between me and Thor."

Steve glanced at the computer screen and saw that Bucky had taken the liberty of researching some of the other Avengers while his brain had been distracted by pointless thoughts.

"It depends, I mean if it was just a battle of strengths then Thor would win no problem... don't look at me like that, that guy can control lightning."

"I have a funky arm."

"A funky arm that's made of metal, which would make it even easier for him to electrocute you." Bucky huffed and stuck out his bottom lip like a 5 year old. "As I was saying, if it wasn't just a head on battle you could definitely outsmart him no problem. I mean Thor's strong but he's also a bit... hammer happy." That made Bucky grin cockily. 

"Damn right I could outsmart him, I would send his sorry ass right back to space."

"You seem surprisingly okay with the fact that I know a demigod."

"Steve, I'm a 95 year old Soviet assassin with a bionic arm, who's best friend is a genetically modified super soldier that prances around with the American flag on his chest. These days I'm just rolling with it."

***

Steve was interrupted by Clint's sudden outburst of laughter. Nat scowled at him and he raised his hands defensively. 

"What? The guy has a point." She ignored him and turned back to Steve. 

"So you used to have feelings for him?"

"Used to?" Clint snorted and Nat slapped his arm. "Oh I'm sorry did you miss the in depth description of his facial features?"

"Clint you are an insensitive jackass."

"I know. We have so much in common." He blew a kiss at her and she rolled her eyes. Steve shifted awkwardly. 

"I'm pretty sure he knew." He mumbled, and the pair looked back over at him. "I mean I wasn't exactly great at hiding that sort of thing and Bucky knew me better than I knew myself anyway. But he'd always kinda... push me away if I got too close."

"As in he'd tell you he wasn't interested?" Steve wasn't entirely sure why Natasha was showing so much interest in this.

"No, as in the next day he would have suddenly arranged some kind of double date for the pair of us, and would try to find me a girl."

"Oh..."

"So what else happened?" Clint interrupted, taking it upon himself to change the subject. 

"During the day, nothing much else. Neither of us mentioned what had happened again, hell, I wasn't even sure if Bucky remembered it. So we watched a movie and I went to bed. Then in the middle of the night I heard a noise so I went to check it out."

***

"Bucky?" Steve rubbed his eyes sleepily as he walked into the kitchen and looked to see what Bucky was doing. He was still dressed in jeans and a t-shirt and gave Steve a casual nod as he came in, before turning his attention back to the coffee machine.

"You know, I can pilot a jet and do a double back flip, but I cannot figure out how to work this thing. Did I wake you up? I didn't mean to. I mean, I was going to, so you could get this working, but..."

"Bucky what are you doing up?" 

He looked at Steve as if he'd asked something really stupid, and when he realised it was a serious question, shrugged and said "I don't sleep."

"What do you mean you don't sleep?"

"I mean I don't need to sleep now will you help me make some coffee because I'm this close to throwing this damn machine out the window."

"That's bullshit, Bucky."

"Oh yeah? Try me. Just see if I don't throw this piece of shit contraption right out the..."

"Not that you idiot. Of course you need to sleep."

Bucky frowned at him and shook his head, wrapping his arms around himself and looking at the ground. It took Steve a minute to work out what was wrong, and when it hit him he quickly walked over and wrapped his arms around Bucky, who leant into the hug but kept his arms folded.

"Last time I slept I didn't wake up for 5 months."

"I know, I'm sorry."

"I didn't mean to wake you up."

"You need to get some sleep." Bucky shook his head. "Buck, you started verbally abusing a coffee machine, you need sleep and I'm not going anywhere until you agree."  When his friend said nothing Steve sighed, resting his head on Bucky's. "Will it help if I stay with you? Just... just so you don't wake up on your own." 

Steve didn't expect anything from it. If anything he thought he'd be so horrified by that idea that he'd immediately go to bed on his own. So he was a little taken aback when Bucky nodded, leaning into him a little bit more and nuzzling his shoulder. Steve looked down at him and saw his face had changed, now reflecting just how tired he was. He was fighting to keep his eyes open and Steve wouldn't have been all that shocked if he'd fallen asleep just standing there. How long had he been going without sleep before Steve had found him?  
He somehow managed to guide him into the bedroom and Bucky all but collapsed onto the bed. Steve took a minute to be thankful that these were new beds, because there's no way their old ones would have survived the force of having all of Bucky's weight dropped onto them.   
Thinking he was already asleep, Steve sat on the bed, propping himself up against the headboard. As he did so Bucky rolled over and curled up tightly against his side, his metal arm wrapped around himself protectively. Steve waited until he started snoring softly, which took all of 10 seconds, before starting to run his fingers through the tangled mess of hair on Bucky's head. He desperately hoped Bucky would get it cut at some point, but given all that had gone on today, it wasn't exactly his top priority. 

***

The first time Bucky woke up Steve hadn't fallen asleep yet. He'd been sitting, absent-mindedly running his hand over the grooves in Bucky's arm when he suddenly sat bolt upright, gasping for breath and looking around with a panicked look on his face. 

"Bucky?" He whipped his head around at Steve and his eyes widened, as if he were surprised to see him.

"S... Steve?"

"Yeah, it's me, you're okay." Steve reached out and gently pulled on Bucky's arm to try and get him to lie down again but he stayed frozen.

"What the hell are you doing here?" He whispered, and Steve figured that was his cue to leave Bucky's room and started to move, but his wrist was pinned down almost painfully by Bucky's arm. "You're going to get yourself killed."

"I... What?"

"How did you get in here? Did they capture you? Did they hurt you?" Steve stared at him in bewilderment.

"Okay, Bucky I have no idea what you're talking about. We're in your bedroom." Bucky frowned at him in confusion and then looked around again, visibly relaxing when he saw Steve was right and removing the grip he had on his wrist.

"Oh... I... What time is it? What... how long?"

"You've been asleep for an hour, Bucky, it's 2 am." Bucky let out a deep breath and moved himself up the bed slightly so he could lean his head on Steve's chest, making Steve's heart flutter a little. Dammit why was he such an idiot? "You okay?"

"Yeah, I just..." Bucky sighed and curled himself up, closing his eyes again. "Just stay here."

"I'm not going anywhere." Steve promised, stroking Bucky's hair again until they both fell asleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just FYI I had already written this part out along with the first chapter, so the third chapter won't be up quite as quickly... please don't kill me.


	3. Chapter 3

Natasha had moved from her spot on the couch and was now sitting on the floor next to Steve, which he figured was her way of trying to make him feel more comfortable. Clint hadn't been to happy though, as they now kept the bowl of popcorn on the floor, meaning he had to make some considerable effort every time he wanted to get some. 

"He woke up every hour on the dot. Like it was programmed into him to only sleep for that long."

"Did he freak out every time?"

"The second time it was pretty much the same again, but then after that he'd just sort of look up at me to check I was still there and I'd tell him what time it was, then he'd just go back to sleep again. Then the next morning he seemed to be back to normal again for a little while."

***

Steve had panicked when he woke up in an empty bed, but soon relaxed when he heard Bucky whistling to himself from the next room. 

"Rise and shine, Captain." Bucky almost sung as he poked his head around the door, grinning cheerfully. "I have good news."

"They're shipping you out to Australia so I don't have to listen to you talk any more?"

"You're a real card you know that?" Bucky pushed the door open completely and leant against the door frame. "As I was saying, I may struggle to remember childhood memories, but I still remember how to cook."

"You made breakfast?"

"Bingo! And I did it all without burning the building to the ground!" Bucky looked so genuinely proud of himself that Steve couldn't help but smile back at him. "Now are you gonna get up or do I have to play housemaid?"

Steve rolled his eyes and pushed himself off the bed as Bucky disappeared through the door again, going back to his whistling. Clearly getting 6 hours of broken sleep had done Bucky the world of good, he just hoped it would last for a little while. 

"I made breakfast!" Bucky called as Steve sat on the couch, and emerged from the kitchen with a plate in each hand.

"Yeah, you mentioned that." It was hard to tell if Bucky was just incredibly enthusiastic about scrambled eggs, or if his memory was really that bad, but he decided not to mention it in case it broke Bucky's good mood. He'd clearly got carried away in his excitement about being able to cook, he seemed to have made enough food to feed a small country.  
He was almost finished eating when he realised Bucky was staring at him expectantly, waiting for some kind of verdict. 

"It's good, Bucky, it's really good."

"You don't have to sound so shocked." Bucky retorted, although he didn't seem to be able to stop the proud grin from creeping onto his face. He hopped up and wandered back to the kitchen and Steve could hear the clattering of pots as he washed up, everything felt so normal. 

***

"Dude, what the hell?" Steve hadn't heard Bucky walking back into the sitting room, he turned around and saw him gesturing at the empty plate he'd left on the coffee table after he'd finished eating. 

"Don't worry about it, I can wash it up." 

"You made breakfast and didn't even offer me any? Not cool."

"I... What?" Bucky folded his arms grumpily and Steve stared at him, dumbfounded.

"I mean I'm not even that hungry but it wouldn't have hurt to ask."

"Bucky I... You made breakfast."

"Just because I am having some brain difficulties right now doesn't mean you can just convince me that... forget it, man." Bucky sat down on the opposite end of the couch and stretched out, poking Steve's thigh with his foot. "Don't look so guilty, it's not important."

Steve was torn between wanting to tell Bucky the truth, and not wanting to upset him. He looked down at his hands and Bucky poked him with his foot again.

"You okay, Stevie?"

"You keep forgetting." He mumbled. Bucky cocked his head and looked at him with a blank expression on his face. "You keep forgetting about the breakfast. You forgot you'd told me about it... and now you've forgotten you even ate it. I mean we both knew you were having trouble remembering stuff about your past but you... you can't even remember what you did five minutes ago."

"I was washing up five minutes ago." There was a hint of uncertainty in Bucky's voice so Steve nodded at him reassuringly. "But before that... I just remember getting up? I don't know... repacing your steps usually helps right? Let's try that." 

Bucky was panicking, but Steve didn't stop him from getting up and walking into the bedroom just in case it actually helped jog his memory.

"Right so I came out of here... and then I went in here." Steve stopped paying attention to him as he wandered to and fro around the apartment, and started typing out responses all the messages on his phone, letting them know that the Winter Soldier hadn't murdered him in his sleep. He was about to hit send on a reply to Bruce's message when he paused, and quickly added to it. 

          Hey, I'm still alive. Don't suppose you know anything on the subject of memory loss do you?

He knew Bruce hated when people generalised his doctor title, but right now he was the only person Steve knew who might have some idea of what was going on, and more importantly how they could treat it... if they could treat it. His phone buzzed again a few seconds later. 

          Not a lot. What do you need to know?

Steve started to write out everything that had happened to Bucky so far when he heard the sound of glass smashing in the kitchen. He looked around and saw Bucky standing in there, staring at the smashed glass on the floor. 

"Hey, you okay?" He hurried over and put his hands on Bucky's shoulders. Bucky stared at him for a long moment and then shook his head, looking back down at the glass. "Did you remember?" He shook his head again.

"I... I don't know what happened... I was talking to you and now I'm in here." 

"Oh... Well I guess now we know repacing your steps doesn't help then." Steve smiled at him but Bucky just stared back blankly.

"I guess. Maybe..." Bucky's eyes widened suddenly and he started looking around the room frantically. "What is that?"

"What? Bucky what is it?"

"That nois... agh!" He dropped to the ground, not seeming to care about the shards of broken glass he was kneeling on. Steve didn't know what to do. Bucky was whimpering and pressing his hands over his ears but Steve had no idea what he was hearing.

"Bucky, look at me." He crouched down in front of him and cupped his face in his hands so he looked up. "It's not real, whatever you can hear, it's not real."

"It's real I... I remember it." 

"You remember what?"

"The screaming." He locked eyes with Steve for a moment and then doubled over in pain again. Steve sat down properly, wincing at some of the glass shards poking into his legs, and wrapped his arms around Bucky to pull him over. "I can't get it to stop." 

"Let me try." Steve moved Bucky's hands away from his ears and replaced them with his own, which seemed to make him relax a little. "It that helping?" Bucky nodded and shuffled closer to him, curling up and leaning his head on Steve's chest. They sat like that for ten minutes until Bucky looked up at him.

"I think it's stopped." He said, moving Steve's hands away and looking around cautiously. "We should... I should clean this up." He started pushing some of the glass into a pile with his metal hand and Steve nodded.

"Right, I'll go get a broom." He started to get up but Bucky grabbed his wrist and pulled him back down gently. He didn't look up or say anything but Steve knew what he was thinking. Every time he'd forgotten something so far had been when they'd been in separate rooms, and he didn't want to risk it happening again. 

"It's gonna keep happening."

"We don't know that."

"Steve..."

"Look, I have a friend and he's a doctor, he'll be able to help." Bucky stopped what he was doing and sat up.

"I'm just saying if I start to forget more important stuff... go back to what I was like before..."

"That's not going to happen."

"But if it does just promise you won't go all soft on me 'cause I'm your best friend. I don't want anyone else to get hurt." He looked at Steve expectantly, waiting for some kind of agreement. Steve nodded at him, although neither of them looked entirely convinced that he really would be able to take Bucky out if he went rogue again, but it still seemed to make Bucky relax enough to let Steve go back into the next room and grab his phone.   
He typed out everything that had happened and sent it to Bruce, praying he would be able to come up with some miracle treatment. There was no way he was going to lose his best friend again.  


	4. Chapter 4

_"_ Well, I'm not that kind of Doctor, but since you all think I am I started looking into some stuff and studying a bit, I'd say your friend is suffering from some sort of combination of psychosis, anterograde amnesia, as well as some transient global amnesia."

"Right... what does that all mean?"  It was lucky Bruce had the patience of a saint. Steve had sent him at least five frantic texts yesterday about what had happened, and had then proceeded to feel guilty about bothering him for the rest of the day, but Bruce hadn't even mentioned it once when he eventually phoned him. 

"Uh, well you said he sometimes hallucinates right? That's the psychosis part. There are drugs you can take for that, but if his metabolisms's anything like yours he'd probably have to take about 50 before they had any kind of effect. The amnesia is a bit trickier. Sometimes he recognises you, but not where he is or how he got there for short periods of time. Sometimes he doesn't remember anything, new or old. That's the anterograde amnesia breaking his connection to his long term memory."

"Is there any way to fix it?"

"I'd find a more qualified doctor for that. Although I hear Tony's been making some major investments for the local hospitals at the moment, so he might have some idea of how to help, or at least be able to point you in the right direction."

"Great, thanks."

"...Steve."

"Yeah?"

"It's... Sometimes it's irreversible, so try not to get your hopes up to much. It might be better for him if you both just figure out how to live around it." 

"Well he's been okay all morning." Steve said, praying Bruce couldn't hear his voice cracking. "Maybe it'll sort itself out on it's own."

"Yeah, maybe. But..."

"He'll pull through, he always does. Thanks for everything, Bruce." He felt guilty for hanging up so abruptly, but he could tell Bruce was psyching himself up for a lecture about how he shouldn't be beating himself up over what was happening and right now he just didn't need to hear that. He slammed the grocery basket down on the counter with more force than he had intended, and threw an apologetic look at the cashier, who just stared at him in wide-eyed shock until Steve tapped on the counter impatiently. He'd already been out for 10 minutes and he'd promised Bucky he'd be back in 15. Admittedly it had been a pretty empty promise seeing as it takes eight minutes just to walk to the grocery store, but he couldn't bear the worried expression on his friend's face when he'd told him he was gonna be on his own for a little while. And Steve was worried too. His mind had repeatedly reminded him that there could have been people watching the building, just waiting for Steve to leave and for Bucky to be on his own, practically defenceless. But they'd been running low on food and Steve decided this was safer than risking Bucky being recognised in public, and having to deal with god-knows-what government organisations might have the Winter Soldier on their hit lists.   
After what seemed like an hour, but was in fact only three minutes, the cashier finally finished scanning everything and Steve handed him the credit card Tony had set him up with, claiming he would "never have to worry about money again". It then took another two minutes for them to swipe it and hand it back, it was just his luck to get the world's slowest store worker on the one day he really needed to get home, and he hurriedly grabbed the bags and practically bolted out the door.   
He managed to make it back home in five minutes rather than eight, a new record, but that didn't stop him from taking the stairs three at a time. 

"Hey Buck." Steve called, panting slightly. Spending the last three days doing nothing more than walking from one end of the apartment to the other had taken it's toll. "I got some pasta, I was thinking I could make ma's old recipe. You used to really love..." He didn't have time to react as his shield suddenly came flying at his head and everything went black.

***

 The first thing Steve noticed when he came to was that he couldn't move his hands or his feet, and it took a few more seconds for his vision to focus before he could see that he'd been tied down to a chair. The second thing he noticed was the hard stare Bucky was giving him from the chair he was perched on, about a metre or so away from him. 

"How did you find me?"  A cold voice said, and it took Steve a moment to register that Bucky was talking to him.

"I... uh, what?" Before Steve could even blink Bucky's face was inches away from his, glaring at him. He felt something cold on his neck and realised Bucky was holding a knife to his throat, suddenly aware that his fear of Bucky being unable to defend himself if anyone had broken in while he was gone had been completely irrational. 

"I said how did you find me." He said through gritted teeth.

"Bucky it's me, it's Steve." Bucky slapped him hard across the face with his metal hand, leaving his face stinging. 

"Answer the question."

"Bucky you gotta focus." 

"Shut up!" He slapped him again, even harder. "Steve's not here." 

He remembered him. Steve felt as relieved as was possible for somebody tied to a chair with a deadly assassin standing in front of them. He still remembered him, he just couldn't recognise him, he wasn't lost. Suddenly he had Bucky's metal hand around his throat. 

"How do you know about him? What have you done to him? If anything's happened to him I'm gonna make you all regret it." Steve couldn't deny the slight jump his heart did at Bucky getting protective over him. He tried to make himself focus. 

"Bucky it's me, just stop for a minute."

"Steve's not here!" Bucky yelled, slapping him a third time. Steve didn't want to think about how his face was going to look after this, or how Bucky would react once he snapped out of whatever this was. 

"Well if he were here don't you think he'd be a little upset seeing you beat people up like this?" The knife was at his throat again and Bucky stared directly into his eyes.

"He doesn't have to find out." He growled, pressing the knife closer. Steve didn't want to hurt Bucky, but he had no doubt that if he didn't Bucky would kill him without a second thought. The bonds Bucky had tied him up with would have been enough to hold a regular guy, but Steve was able to break them in a matter of seconds and knock the knife out of Bucky's hand, grabbing him by the wrists and pushing him to the floor. Bucky managed to get a few good punches to Steve's face before he was able to get his arm around his neck and cut off his air supply until he lost consciousness. 

***

"Wait, wait, hang on a second." Clint said, sitting upright. "So you're saying he literally tried to kill you, and you didn't contact us."

"I knew he wouldn't be able to hurt me."

"Steve that's not the point, he was dangerous."

"He was just confused."

"Steve..."

"Don't!" Both Clint and Natasha backed up a little bit and glanced at each other, the concern obvious on their faces. "It was just 'cause I left him alone so long. It was my fault, not his. He didn't know what he was doing."

"You don't have to blame yourself." Nat put a hand on his shoulder. "None of this is your fault."

"How? Give me one reason how this wasn't my fault. I could have gone looking for him the minute we captured Zola but I didn't, I could have reached out further and grabbed him before he fell from the train but I didn't, hell, it was my fault he even signed up for the army in the first place!" 

"And then what? He would have thought you died flying that ship into the ocean, and would have had to live the rest of his life feeling exactly the same as you do now." Nat said sternly, squeezing his shoulder gently. "Just be thankful he has you now." 

***

"So you're telling me the guy who five minutes ago tried to kill you is now all huddled up on the couch with no restraints whatsoever. Steve did you ever stop to consider that maybe that's a bad idea."

"He's not going to hurt me, Tony."

"Your optimism is sickening." Steve frowned. He wished everyone could have seen Bucky before, so that maybe they could understand that Bucky wasn't just another threat for them to take out.   
It had taken a couple of minutes for him to get Bucky up on to the couch, he was heavier than he looked, and to try and get his face cleaned up before he phoned Tony. Although it hadn't done much good, there was no way Bucky wasn't going to notice the bruises when he woke up, so he was just going to have to try and think of some kind of excuse. 

"So can you help or not?"

"Take a chill pill Cap, I'm kinda tied up right now, but I'll look into it and call you back ASAP. However I'm gonna need hourly updates from you so I know your soviet boyfriend hasn't murdered you."

"Right."

"I'm serious, Rogers."

"I never doubted it, I'll talk to you later." For all his snark and arrogance, it was always nice to know that Tony did actually care about him rather than just seeing him as an asset and easy target for all his ice puns. He looked down at Bucky, who was sprawled out along the couch with his head against Steve's leg, and absent-mindedly started running his fingers through his hair, praying he'd be back to normal again when he woke up. 

"Steve?" Bucky mumbled groggily after a few minutes, looking around the room slowly.

"I'm right here, pal." 

"I think... did I take a nap?" The relief Steve felt when Bucky recognised him was almost indescribable. "I think I took a nap. Did you get groceries?"

"Yeah, we're having pasta for dinner." Bucky smiled and pushed himself up the couch a little so he could rest his head in Steve's lap, letting out a content little sigh when Steve started stroking his hair again. "Who needs a dog when I've got you, right?"

"Shut up you jerk, don't ruin it."

"Oh I'm sorry, were you having a moment?" Steve said in a mocking tone, laughing when Bucky huffed in annoyance.

"Do you even realise how often I wanted to do this but I couldn't 'cause I was scared I'd snap your thigh bones in half just by leaning on 'em?" That caught Steve off guard, but Bucky didn't seem to think there was anything interesting about what he'd said and just nuzzled at Steve's leg, curling up slightly. When Steve didn't say anything he chuckled. "Have I flustered you, Steven... Jesus what happened to your face?" Suddenly Bucky was sitting upright, cupping Steve's face in his hand and looking at the bruises. 

"It's nothing, Buck, don't worry about it."

"Are you kidding me? Who did this?" 

"Nobody."

"What, did you just decide to go a few rounds on your own face?"  Steve wasn't sure what to focus on, the fact that, one way or another, Bucky was going to find out what had happened, or the fact that right now he was straddling him and staring at him with a mixture of annoyance and concern on his face, while the metal fingers of his hand traced the bruises on his face. "The fact that you're not telling me only makes me more willing to beat them up, you know."

"I don't need you to protect me any more, Bucky."

"And you think that's gonna stop me?" Bucky sighed and pressed their foreheads together. "You're right. You probably beat 'em up already anyway right? I mean look at you. I can't even get my head around why anyone would be stupid enough to pick a fight with you in the first place. What am I even doing? I should get off you." He swung his leg around and sat down next to Steve, who was still trying to get over the relief that Bucky had let it go.

"Thanks anyway."

"I didn't do anything."

"No but... it's nice to know you're still looking out for me." Bucky smiled and shook his head.

"Next time I won't be so forgiving. We'll see how people like it when they got the Winter Soldier on their asses." 

"I'm sure they're quaking with fear as we speak."

"They better be. When I'm finished with them they'll look even worse than you."

Bucky rested his head on Steve's shoulder and within a few minutes was snoring, so Steve got up and laid him down, pulling the spare blanket out from under the couch to tuck him up in. He sat on the floor for a moment, watching him, and then got up and went into the kitchen, hoping that would stop the voice in his head that was telling him to kiss his forehead. 


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh man you do not even want to know the struggle I went through to get this finished I was two sentences away from finishing and then accidentally closed the tab and lost the whole thing and yeah it wasn't fun but it is FINISHED. 
> 
> Side note: none of the drugs mentioned are real things I just found some drug name generator online and used whatever it gave me. :)

Steve woke up to the sound of metal lightly knocking on his bedroom door. He wasn't sure how he'd gotten into bed, the last thing he remembered was sitting on the couch watching Bucky have his mind blown by the 'amazing effects' in Jurassic Park. He'd decided to break Bucky in gently to modern movies. He'd never admit to it but he always used to geek out at that kind of stuff when they were younger, and he was genuinely worried Bucky would have a heart attack if he saw some of the stuff they made nowadays. The knocking came again and he pushed himself off the bed, running a hand through his hair as he opened the door.   
When the door opened Bucky didn't look up, instead he took a step back and wrapped his arms around himself tightly. 

"You okay, Bucky?" He nodded, still not looking up. "What is it? Did you have a nightmare? Another hallucination? Was it..."

"No!" Bucky screamed at him when he reached out to hold his shoulder, taking a few more steps back until he was pressed up against the wall of the hallway. "Don't... don't come near me... I don't want to hurt you." Bucky looked up at him now, his eyes trailing across the bruises on Steve's face and then going back down to his hand. Steve took a few steps towards him.

"You didn't know what you were doing, Bucky, it's not your fault."

"I did know what I was doing I just... I didn't know it was you, Steve. How can I have not known it was you?" Steve took another step forward and Bucky flinched, trying to press himself closer to the wall. 

"It's okay..."

"No it's not okay! I almost killed you! Jesus, you need to stop just brushing all this stuff off like it's just gonna fix itself 'cause from what I can tell, it's getting worse, not better. What if next time I don't remember you at all? I mean like just now when you opened the door, if I'd had a knife or something you'd be dead. You're... you're putting too much trust in me. I'm dangerous."

You're not dangerous, Bucky." He reached out a hand again and Bucky grabbed his wrist tightly in his metal hand, holding it in place for a few seconds before dropping it and shrugging. 

"Could'a broken your wrist just then, if I'd wanted to."

"But you didn't." Bucky sighed and shook his head. He took a few steps forward and leant into Steve, who wrapped his arms tightly around him. 

"Not gonna win this argument, am I?"

"Not in a million years." 

"Can you just promise me one thing?" He looked up and Steve cocked his head expectantly. "Next time something like this happens, don't just brush it off like it's nothing. 'Kay?" 

"There might not be a next time."

"Don't start again, Stevie. I don't have the energy." Bucky mumbled, draping his arms around Steve's shoulders sleepily and nestling his face in the crook of his neck. "Do you promise or not?"

"Yeah, I promise." Steve said quietly, hoping there would never be a situation where he'd have to keep it. Bucky didn't say anything, just made a content little noise and nuzzled Steve's neck. He was pressed up against him and Steve just prayed he couldn't feel how fast his heart was beating as Bucky's fingers traced along his shoulder blade and started playing with the label that was sticking out of his shirt.   
They stayed standing there in silence for a few minutes and Steve was just starting to wonder if he should say something to break the silence when Bucky pushed away from him suddenly, wiping at his eyes furiously and cursing at himself. Steve wasn't sure how long Bucky had been crying on his shoulder for, and immediately wanted to kick himself for not noticing. 

"You okay?"

"Yeah, yeah I'm fine."

"Bucky..."

"I have a reputation to keep, Rogers." He forced a smile and Steve frowned at him, reaching back out and squeezing Bucky's shoulders gently. "You're real cute when you're worried, you know that?" Bucky's smile looked a little more genuine this time, as he lifted his right hand and cupped Steve's face, brushing his thumb against one of the bruises on his cheek. 

"Don't change the subject."

"I didn't. Now I'm going to bed before I make an even bigger ass of myself." 

"Are you sure?"

"Did you have other plans?" Bucky waggled his eyebrows and grinned, giggling like a ten year old when Steve gave him a hard shove on the shoulder. "What? Did I come on too strong?"

"Please act your age." Steve muttered. He hated when he did that. It wasn't that he had a problem with Bucky flirting with him, it was just that there was always one small part of his brain that wondered if maybe he actually meant it. Then he would remember all the girls he used to tell him about, and all the times he'd pushed him away, and would always end up hating himself for ever even thinking about it. 

"96 years old and still a prude. Sweet dreams, Stevie." Bucky smiled, turning on his heel and disappearing off into his bedroom. Something was bothering him. He'd done his usual trick of saying something to throw Steve off, and then running off before he could call him out on it. Steve was torn between wanting to confront him about it, and not wanting to add another thing to their list of problems that needed to be dealt with, so for now he just sighed and retreated back to his own room in the hopes of getting some more sleep. 

***

"Can we please focus, Tony?"

"I am focused. Focused on the fact that I specifically told you to keep in touch and then didn't hear a word from you until late this morning."

"I was kinda busy."

"Yeah, busy playing with your pet assassin." Steve glanced over at Bucky, who was perched on a desk next to them. He looked to be rather enjoying watching them argue, and seemed fairly indifferent to the way Tony was referring to him. "I was worried about you, Steve, you should have messaged me."

"Aw he was worried 'bout you, Stevie." Bucky teased, kicking Steve gently and cracking up when Tony shot him a cold look. 

"You're right, Tony, I was wrong. That truly is the face of a cold blooded killer." Bucky almost fell off the desk he was laughing so hard and Tony let out a frustrated sigh. "Hey look, you made him laugh. Been tryin'a do that all week."

"Shows what great company you make." It was hard for Steve to think of a witty response with Bucky making a noise that resembled a dying seal next to him. He couldn't even remember the last time he'd heard him laugh that hard. "Is he laughing at you or me now?"

"Honestly, I'm not sure any more."

"Well it's making me uncomfortable, you need to get more control over your pets."

"Steve did you take me to see your friend or your mother?" Bucky managed to say, composing himself a little bit. 

"You see, I try to show a little compassion and I get this. This is why I usually don't bother." 

"Sorry, Tonetta."

"Really? Tonetta? Are you hearing this, Steve?"

"Yeah come on, Bucky, that's just stupid." Tony smiled smugly and Bucky's face fell a little, but Steve just smirked at him and added "I think he's more of an Antonia don't you?" Bucky lost it completely and collapsed onto the desk laughing. Tony just stared in stunned silence for a few minutes. 

"You guys are mean. Remind me again why I'm helping you?"

"You haven't helped us yet." Steve pointed out and Tony frowned at him, guiding him over to one of the many screens that decorated the walls of the room. He swiped at thin air and the screen lit up, showing a whole collection of medical documents. 

"So I think it's safe to assume that none of the regular drugs on the market will have any effect on him, given as he seems to have been dosed up with the same sort of stuff that turned you into Captain Hotpants. But, I did some digging around into the anterograde amnesia treatments and found a whole load of other treatments that are still going through the trial stages. Most of them were just a load of crap, but a few of them caught my attention and looked like they might have some kind of chance of helping your uh... friend over there." He gestured over to Bucky, who was sprawled out on the desk on his stomach, shaking with laughter still. 

"Trial drugs? Won't they be dangerous?"

"Do you think I'm an idiot? They're still in the trial stages because they don't know for sure if they will provide a long term solution or not. And, being as brilliant as I am, I was able to get you a few samples. No need to thank me." Tony dug into his pockets and produced three small orange pots, each containing five brightly coloured tablets, handing them over to Steve. "I mean, I know it's not much, but it was all I could get at the time. I'm sure I can hook you up with some more if any of them turn out to be the miracle cure you're searching for."

"No, this is great! I... thank you."

"You don't have to sound so surprised. Believe it or not I do actually like to help out when I can." He smiled, patting Steve on the arm. 

"I don't know, I'm still not quite convinced about that."

"Are you two still bickering?" Tony and Steve both jumped slightly and turned around to see Bucky standing behind them, grinning. 

"Does he always do that? You should get him a bell." Steve just rolled his eyes and held the pots out for Bucky to examine. 

"You think these'll help?" He asked, a little uncertainly, looking over at Tony who just shrugged. 

"Can't say for sure, but it's the best I could come up with on short notice. I'll keep looking into it though."

"Huh, worth a shot I guess. Thanks Antonia." Tony put up a fight as Bucky pulled him over and hugged him. 

"Um, that is a violation of my personal space and... okay this is happening." Bucky started laughing again as he let Tony go again. "You're not gonna kiss me now are you?"

"Stevie might if these things actually work." He turned around and smiled at Steve. "We gonna get goin'?" Steve nodded and Tony actually looked a little disappointed that they were leaving. He guided them both to one of the less conspicuous entrances to the building, all the way mumbled about how he'd been working on adding personal floors for each of the Avengers and would be sure to add in some features that he felt would suit Bucky's personality into Steve's floor, and how they were welcome to use the tower as a hideout if anybody tried to track them down, and how they should really visit more often because even genius billionaires wanted to have movie nights sometimes. He seemed to have really warmed up to Bucky, not that Steve was surprised, Bucky always used to have that effect on everyone anyway. 

When they were back at the apartment Steve set out each pot of tablets in a line on the counter and examined the labels on them. There was Obaciol, which was a half red, half yellow capsule; Boxyl, a pale green tablet; and Xanprophen, a pinky-purple capsule. Bucky leant over his shoulder and looked at him. He was smiling but Steve could see he was nervous. 

"So, which one do you want to try first?" Steve asked, moving his hand over to stroke Bucky's hair. 

"Which one sounds least likely to kill me?" 

"Honestly, they all sound pretty deadly."

"You're a real spirit lifter, Rogers." Bucky said, shaking his head. "Let's start with the green ones. That's still your favourite colour, right?" Steve ignored the back flips his stomach was doing and nodded. Bucky twisted the cap off the bottle and shook one of the tablets into his hand, glancing at Steve with uncertainty. 

"Hey, what could go wrong, right?"


	6. Chapter 6

"That asshole." Clint muttered. Steve and Nat both looked over at him, confused, and he shook his head. "We asked last week if Tony'd heard anything from you and he told us he hadn't seen you since you announced you'd found Bucky. Can't trust a word that comes out of his fucking mouth."

"He was trying to protect them, Clint." Natasha said calmly. "You would have done the same." Clint narrowed his eyes at her, but the look on his face showed he agreed and he sighed, shaking his head again. They both looked like they were getting pretty tired, Nat was resting her head on Clint's knee while he twirled locks of her hair around his fingers. 

"Uh... I can carry on telling you about it tomorrow if you want?"

"No!" They both yelled in unison. 

"Christ, Rogers, you can't just leave us on a cliffhanger like that, we have to know what happened." Clint protested and Steve sighed, leaning against the coffee table he was sat next to. 

***

As it turns out, quite a lot could go wrong.   
The tablet didn't seem to have had much of an effect on Bucky for a while and they carried on pretty much as normal. They had a couple of conversations twice when Bucky forgot he'd already asked something or made that same joke twenty minutes ago, but that was no different to how he'd been for the last week. They ordered pizza after Bucky insisted they deserved a day off from cooking, and then he turned in early because "Even I need my beauty sleep, Stevie." but not before Steve insisted he take another of the tablets to see if it had some kind of overnight effect.   
Steve was still sitting on the couch flicking through the TV channels when he heard Bucky running into the bathroom, shortly followed by the sound of him retching. He padded over to the bathroom and looked down at Bucky, who was slumped over with his head in the toilet.

"Think Stark's trying to poison me."

"Or you just don't have it in you to hold down that much junk food any more." Bucky stuck his middle finger up at him and he laughed, walking over and sitting up against the wall next to him. "So does this mean I get my $5 back, seeing as technically you didn't manage to eat that whole pizza?"

"You can stick that $5 where the sun don't... oh fuck." He groaned, throwing up again. Steve rolled his eyes and leant over, rubbing Bucky's back with one hand and using the other to hold the hair out of his face. 

"Hey, you remember that time you dared me to eat half your birthday cake and then made fun of me when I puked, because that memory's pretty fresh in my mind right now."

"You can fuck right off, Rogers." Bucky grumbled and Steve laughed again, stroking his shoulder. He was pretty certain that it was just the pizza that had made Bucky sick, but he couldn't shake the feeling that maybe it wasn't. 

It wasn't. The next day Steve found Bucky passed out on the couch wrapped up in his duvet and two blankets, glistening with sweat. Steve pressed a hand to his forehead and flinched at how hot it was, he started pulling the blankets off to try and cool him down but Bucky woke up and starting grumbling in protest. 

"Bucky you're burning up."

"I'm cold." Bucky whined, tugging back on the blanket that Steve was holding and sticking out his bottom lip grumpily. Fortunately Steve was stronger than Bucky was, especially when he was in this state, and he eventually managed to get all the blankets away from him.

"See you're feeling better then."

"I think I need a hug." Steve sighed and sat down on the couch, letting Bucky curl up against him and wrapping his arms around him. He could feel the heat radiating off of him, yet Bucky was still shivering and huddling closer to him. "Told you it wasn't the pizza."

"Yeah, I know you did. How'd you feel?"

"Death would be a sweet relief." 

"Drama queen."

"Punk."

"Jerk." 

***

The one thing they did learn from Bucky's sudden fever was that being sick made Bucky's memory ten times worse. He spent most of his time asleep on the couch with his head on Steve's chest and their legs tangled together, and every time he woke up he couldn't remember where he was, how he got there, or why every bone in his body was aching. By the second day Steve wrote out a list of all the things Bucky asked him whenever he woke up, and would hand it over to him to read rather than having to explain it every time. 

You're in our apartment.

Nobody's going to hurt you.

Nobody's hurt me, I'm fine.

You've had a fever for  ~~10 hours~~   ~~14 hours~~   ~~17 hours~~  24 hours 

Painkillers won't help, we already tried them

For the next day and a half Bucky didn't really say much except that he felt like shit and wanted Steve to take those tablets and shove them so far up Tony's ass he could taste them. Steve gave up on trying to get him to eat, no matter what he gave him Bucky wasn't able to hold it down, so he just settled on making sure Bucky had at least a few sips of water every time he woke up.   
It was getting towards the evening of the second day when Bucky actually started sounding a little bit like himself again. 

"We're a real mess, huh?" He mumbled, folding the corners of Steve's note. "Always used to be the other way round."

"What did?" Steve looked up from his sketchbook, which he'd been absent mindedly doodling on all day.

"You know, like usually it would be you knocked off your feet with some horrible illness or another, and it'd be me sitting there wishing I could switch places with you. Doesn't seem like such a great idea now it's actually happening. Watcha drawing?" 

"Nothing." He said, quickly erasing the metal arm he'd just started to add to one of the soldiers on the page. "I'm kinda out of inspiration." Bucky went quiet for a little while and Steve started to think he'd fallen asleep again when he spoke. 

"Draw me riding a shark that's made out of lava, jumping out of a volcano and shooting at aliens in flying saucers." Steve rolled his eyes, he'd never understood how Bucky came up with such ridiculous things to draw. Back when they were younger their fridge had always been covered in drawings of giant robot monkeys and penguins with laser eyes, usually accompanied by Bucky shooting at something. "And make sure you properly capture my physique, don't make me look all scrawny."

"You want me to draw you with or without the arm?" Bucky looked down at his left arm for a minute and shrugged.

"It would probably come in handy for fighting off aliens right?" He grinned. When Steve said nothing he held his metal hand in front of his face and wiggled his fingers. "Geddit, Stevie? Come in handy?"

"You're too much." Steve said in a flat tone, but he couldn't fight off the smile on his face. It was the first time he'd seen Bucky look even remotely happy in the last two days. Bucky smiled sleepily and stretched out, making Steve cringe as he cracked some of his joints. 

"Wake me up when you finish my masterpiece." He mumbled, curling back up and nestling his head against Steve's arm. He fell asleep again almost instantly and Steve smiled, running his fingers through Bucky's hair a few times before starting to sketch out his 'masterpiece'. 

***

When Bucky next woke up he'd forgotten he'd ever asked Steve to draw him anything, but it didn't stop him from getting excited when he saw the finished thing.

"Jesus that's beautiful. Past me was a genius." He said, examining it. Steve chuckled and stroked Bucky's hair, brushing away some of the strands that had fallen into his face while he was asleep. "Okay, now draw a mountain lion fighting a dinosaur, and I can be riding the lion and you can... no wait, I want to ride the dinosaur, you can be riding the mountain lion. And we can joust." 

"Alrighty."

"This is gonna be fucking brilliant." 

Every two hours or so, on through the night and into the next day, Bucky would wake up and set Steve another thing to draw. Occasionally he would wake up before Steve had finished, and would watch him drawing, constantly thinking of more things for him to add in. 

"Ooh, add in a giant squid."

"Bucky, it's a picture of two kangaroos boxing in the desert. How is a squid gonna fit in to that."

"You gotta learn to think outside the box a little, Stevie."

***

"Okay, Steve, when all this has been sorted out you gotta show this guy the Austin Powers movies."

"The... what?"

"Just trust me, he'll love them." Natasha insisted. Clint nodded in agreement and started laughing as Steve just blinked at them in confusion, shaking his head and carrying on. 

***

"Can I ask you something?" Bucky asked between mouthfuls of toast. It had been four days now and his appetite had finally returned, so far he had eaten his way through almost an entire loaf of bread, half a carton of eggs, a pack of bacon, and 3 chocolate bars, all in the last 2 hours. He had also finally remembered what was going on when he last woke up, so Steve took this as a sign that he was finally better. "Do you prefer my hair like this, or how it was before?" Steve frowned, combing his fingers through the matted hair on Bucky's head. From day one he'd been hoping Bucky would want to get it cut, but he had been starting to get used to it.

"Did you want to cut it?"

"I was thinking you should."

"I don't think I'm really qualified to do that." Bucky sat up suddenly and started sifting through the pile of drawings Steve had made for him, holding a few up for him to look at. He hadn't even realised he'd been drawing Bucky with his short hair the whole time and he felt his face go red. "Just 'cause I can draw it doesn't mean I'll be able to cut it like that."

"Hey, it'll grow back. And if you screw it up too much I can just snip a few bits off yours so we're even." Steve wasn't convinced but Bucky kept brushing bits of hair out of his face as if to prove a point and he could see he wasn't going to let this go.

"Okay, fine but just remember that this was your idea... also if you touch my hair I'll kill you." Bucky grinned victoriously and jumped up off the couch, following Steve into the bathroom. 

"Make it just like you remember."

 


	7. Chapter 7

He had to admit, considering he had virtually no experience in hair styling of any kind, Steve actually did a pretty decent job of getting Bucky's hair back to how it used to be. When he was finished Bucky pulled a huge grin at him and Steve felt his pulse quicken, trying his best not to stare at his best friend as he ran his fingers through his newly cut hair.

"Barricade those doors, Stevie, 'cause when the girls hear about this they'll be fighting for a piece of me." He winked and Steve rolled his eyes, trying to disguise the fact that his heart had sunk a little. Spending the last few days doing very little other than lying on the couch with Bucky curled up against him had made him forget temporarily that it wouldn't always be like that. He was brought out of his train of thought by Bucky gently nudging him on the shoulder. "You okay?"

"Yeah, I'm fine. I was just thinking we should probably think about trying some of the other tablets now you're feeling better."

"You know, I think I feel another fever coming on."

"Bucky..."

"If you think I'm taking any more of those things you can forget it."

"They might help you, Buck."

"Yeah, fat lotta help those first ones were." Steve frowned at him and he sighed, leaning forward so his forehead was resting on Steve's shoulder. "If the next ones make me puke my guts up again I'll break your neck."

They spent longer than was really necessary deciding on which tablet Bucky should try next. Eventually settling on Obaciol because "Anything that's name starts with an x is bad news Steve, and purple definitely isn't a natural colour."  
After he took the tablet he immediately turned to Steve and asked who he was, cracking up when Steve glared at him.

"Not funny."

"It was kinda funny." Bucky chuckled, knocking their shoulders together gently as a way of apologising. "I'm starving."

"You just cleared out most of our food."

"I'm a big man, Stevie."

"Right. I guess I'm going shopping then... you gonna be okay on your own?"

"You're real cute, Rogers. I'm not five years old, I think I'll manage." Bucky rolled his eyes at Steve's uncertain look and started pushing him out of the kitchen. "What are you waiting for? You want me to kiss you goodbye? 'Cause I'll do it you know."   
Steve was almost tempted to wait a while longer just to see if that was an empty threat but he quickly realised that was a stupid idea and grabbed his keys, leaving Bucky calling after him about what a prude he was.

He couldn't have been out for more than half an hour, but when he got back the apartment was quiet and he couldn't see Bucky anywhere. He called out but nobody responded and Steve felt sick as he started frantically searching around each room, desperately hoping that Bucky would just be curled up asleep somewhere stupid. He searched around each of their bedrooms, checking every single ridiculous place that Bucky could realistically fit into, he even looked in the wardrobe for some unknown reason, calling out over and over. It wasn't until he started walking back over to the kitchen that he heard a faint noise coming from the bathroom. The door was locked so he pressed his ear up against the door and could just make out the sound of Bucky's muffled sobs coming from behind it.

"Bucky? Bucky it's me. What's going on?" He called, knocking on the door lightly. The only response he got was a faint whimper and he sighed, squaring his shoulder against the door, ready to break it down. "Bucky? I'm gonna come in okay?"   
It didn't take much effort for Steve to push the door off its hinges, and Bucky didn't so much as flinch at the noise. He was sitting curled up painfully tightly underneath the faucet in the shower, trembling and sobbing into his knees. His clothes were lying in tatters, scattered across the bathroom floor, and Steve could only assume he must have torn them off.   
Cautiously, Steve walked over and sat down next to him, flinching when the scalding hot water hit him and reaching up to turn the temperature down. That made Bucky look up and stare at Steve with wide, terrified eyes.

"S... Steve?" He choked out. Steve nodded and reached out a hand to touch Bucky's shoulder but he jerked away from him. "No! Don't get it on you!"

"Don't get what on me?"

"The blood." Bucky dropped his head back onto his knees and started sobbing even harder. "I can't... I can't get it off." Steve looked him up and down. Technically Bucky was right, he did have blood on him, but Steve could see that was just from where he'd been scrubbing at his arm and legs until they were raw and bleeding. 

"It's not real, Bucky. You're okay." He said softly, putting his arms around Bucky, who didn't flinch away this time and instead moved his head and buried it in Steve's chest. 

"I can't get it off." Bucky whimpered again, clinging on to Steve's shirt with his metal hand and pulling him closer. Steve cupped Bucky's face in his hands, tilting his face up to look at him, he brushed his thumb over Bucky's cheek and he seemed to relax a tiny bit. 

"You want me to try?" He asked, pressing their foreheads together. Bucky nodded slowly and handed him the sponge that he'd been holding tightly in his other hand. Gently, Steve started scrubbing Bucky's right arm, trying his best not to inflict any more damage to it. "Is this helping?" Bucky nodded and stretched out his left arm. It was slightly more tricky cleaning the prosthetic. They still weren't entirely sure how it worked and Steve was worried about getting too much water into the grooves and causing it to malfunction, but Bucky didn't seem worried.   
Steve spent the next 40 minutes scrubbing Bucky's arms, legs, back, and hair, until finally Bucky relaxed and nodded at Steve that it was gone. Then Steve turned the water off and grabbed a couple of towels, wrapping Bucky up in one and using the other to dry his hair off. Bucky hadn't spoken during the entire thing and Steve felt relieved when he finally did. 

"If you ever breathe a word of this to anyone you're a dead man." He said quietly, leaning in to Steve's chest and sighing. Steve didn't say anything, he just put down the damp towel and wrapped his arms tightly around Bucky, and, despite the fact that his brain was screaming at him not to, planted a kiss on Bucky's forehead. 

***

"So uh... I guess we probably shouldn't mention this to him?" Natasha said, stretching her legs out and yawning. Steve nodded, looking down at the floor.

"Yeah, I think that would be best." He mumbled, picking at a thread on his shirt. 

"So it was the tablets that made his hallucinations worse?"

"Yeah, he got them every hour or so. They were a lot worse than the ones he used to have before. At one point he came out of the kitchen and thought the floor was covered with broken glass, and he couldn't walk anywhere because it felt like he was actually stepping on it so I had to carry him onto the couch. And another where he couldn't see anything at all, like, he went completely blind for ten minutes. There wasn't anything we could do except wait for the drug's effects to wear off. It was a shame because for that whole time his memory was great, he never forgot anything." Steve sighed, looking up at them both. "As you can imagine, it took quite a bit of convincing for me to get him to try the last tablets."

***

"Forget it, Steve." 

They had been arguing for the past hour and Steve was starting to lose his patience. Bucky was sitting sideways in an armchair with his legs draped over the side and his arms folded, refusing to look up at him every time he spoke. 

"Bucky it's the only hope we have of getting you better."

"Yeah, and it that really such a good thing? Because at the moment having a bit of short term memory loss seems like the better option."

"But we don't know how much worse it's gonna get and..."

"I don't give a shit, Steve. Unless you're planning on pinning me down and shoving those things down my throat you may as well give up on it." Steve let out of a frustrated sigh. Bucky could be impossibly stubborn sometimes and it drove him crazy. 

"Can you just think about it?"

"Can  **you** think about it?" Bucky finally looked up, giving him a bitter look. "If it was you, and those tablets had made you sick for almost five days and then given you the worst hallucinations of your life, just how happy would you be about taking some more?"

"And just how happy would you be about leaving it alone, when you knew that those last tablets could be the one thing to make me better?" Steve said sharply and Bucky's face softened a little, he looked away again and leant back so his head was resting on the arm of the chair. He closed his eyes and sighed, and Steve knew he couldn't argue against him. They were both unhealthily protective of one another and it was often more of a curse than a blessing. 

"Just... Can you just let me sleep on it, Stevie?" Bucky mumbled, rolling onto his side and trying to curl himself up small enough to fit in the chair properly. Steve just sighed at him.

"You'd probably be more comfortable over here you know." He said after watching Bucky toss and turn for a few minutes. The only response he got was a grumpy huff, but Bucky still got up and flopped himself down on the other side of the couch, curling his legs up to prove that he still wanted to be as far away from Steve as possible.  
After about five minutes Bucky was snoring, and he uncurled slightly so his feet were pressed against Steve's leg. Steve wanted to sit there forever but he knew he'd need to do something to cheer Bucky up, so he settled on cooking his mom's beef stew for dinner. His mother had always had some kind of sixth sense that told her when anyone was upset, and once she realised how much Bucky loved her stews she would make sure to cook it whenever he was visiting and seemed upset about something, so gradually that became Steve's way of making him feel better too.   
He was just dishing it up when he felt a metal arm wrap around his waist, and a head rest against his shoulder blade. 

"I'm sorry." Bucky mumbled sleepily, nuzzling against his back. "I'm being a real jerk at the moment."

"I think you're pretty justified in that."  He felt Bucky nod his head and laughed, turning around so he could put his arms around him. 

"I'm completely justified but I still feel like a dick." Bucky pressed into his chest and sighed when Steve started stroking his hair. "Okay, where are these tablets then?"

"You're sure?"

"Yeah, what have I got to lose besides my last shreds of sanity?" He looked up and pulled a stupid grin and Steve rolled his eyes, reaching behind him to grab the last bottle of tablets from the counter. 


	8. Chapter 8

"He was on the Xanprophen for the next five days. They worked perfectly, they just wore off too quickly. But while they were still working he didn't have any hallucinations or forget everything, so after we ran out we went to see Tony to see if he'd found anything else out since we last saw him."

***

"So you say it was the pink ones that did the trick? Xanywatchamacallit?" Tony didn't look up from the file he was flipping through when he spoke. "Go figure."

"You think you can wrangle up some more for us?" 

"That, my patriotic friend, will not be necessary." He said, spinning around on his chair to face them both and holding up a sheet of paper with all kinds of medical notes scrawled on it. Steve just at him blankly and he sighed. "Okay, so after I set you up with those samples I contacted the various manufacturers to tell them I'd found a willing guinea pig for their treatments and that I'd keep them posted on the various results. Almost immediately they all started sending me all these follow up remedies and alternative versions of the drugs in case they worked. Now, the manufacturers of Xanrarar or whatever you call it sent me this thing which basically says exactly what you just did, that the drug should be effective but won't have very long lasting effects. It then talks about an alternative liquid form of the drug that can be injected directly into the bloodstream, but they've never tried it on anybody so they don't know what kind of effect it will have as it's actually being absorbed, all they know is that if the drug has been shown to have any effect in tablet form then this is almost guaranteed to have long term positive effects on memory retention. So, I propose, seeing as we don't know how it'll effect the Winter Snuggler over here, we should put him under an induced coma for a day or so while the drug's injected, then in theory when he wakes up he'll be good as new." Tony took a minute to get his breath back before raising his eyebrows expectantly, waiting for some kind of response.

"Great! So you think that'll cure him?"

"Steve..."

"Hang on a sec, Bucky. So do you have the drug already or will we have to wait for..."

"Steve I don't like this." Both Steve and Tony turned to look at Bucky, whose face had turned white as a sheet. Steve took a step towards him but he yelped and started backing away, crashing into a table and ending up on the floor, gasping for breath and looking frantically around the room. 

"Well this complicates things." Tony muttered to himself, grabbing hold of Steve's arm and shaking his head when he tried to go over to Bucky. "Probably best to give him a bit of space."

"What's happening? Is it the drugs? Should we call an ambulance?"

"Okay first of all calm down, you make me nervous when you freak out. Second, we don't need an ambulance, it's a panic attack."

"What? How do you know?" Steve didn't do a good job of making himself sound calmer, but Tony didn't comment on it. Instead he just shrugged. 

"Personal experience. Right, Pepper has a load of blankets under the bed in the next room, go grab one and I'll see if I can calm him down a bit."

"I'm not leaving him."

"And I'm not letting you anywhere near him until you've stopped freaking out." Tony folded his arms and Steve sighed, nodding and heading over to the room Tony had pointed out to him.   
He paused for a minute once he was in the bedroom and leant against the wall, letting his heart rate go back down a bit as he looked around the room. 

"Where the hell did he say the blanket's where?" He muttered to himself, he'd been too frantic to pay much attention. 

"Miss Potts keeps them under the bed, Sir." Steve almost jumped out of his skin when JARVIS spoke, and had to give himself a second to recover again. "Sorry for startling you, Captain Rogers."

"No it's uh... It's fine, I guess." It felt a little weird talking to thin air, Steve couldn't work out how Tony could do it all the time without feeling like he was crazy. He found the blankets and made his way back to the other two.   
Bucky seemed a little more relaxed when Steve went back into the other room. He had his head on Tony's shoulder, who was talking to him quietly and rubbing circles on his back. 

"You're okay, big guy. We're not gonna do anything unless you're okay with it, regardless of what Captain Eager over here says." He gestured over at Steve and Bucky looked up at him, smiling weakly. Steve was terrified of saying something that would make it worse so he just walked over slowly and wrapped a blanket around him, sitting a few inches away from him. 

"I don't bite, you know" Bucky murmured when he saw the space Steve had put between them. 

"I know, I just... I don't know."

"You're the first person I've met to get anxiety over other people's anxiety." Tony commented, making Bucky laugh. He sat up and pulled the blanket around himself, taking a few deep breaths. "So, uh, Barnes... what freaked you out?"

"Huh? I don't know. I guess... I guess the idea of being knocked out that long. It just kinda feels like... what they used to do." Steve felt a sick feeling in his gut when he realised Bucky was right. They were treating him the same way Hydra had been, knocking him out and dosing him up with god-knows-what until they were happy with him. He wasn't sure he wanted to know how long Bucky had been thinking about this, but he realised it had probably been more than stubbornness that made Steve constantly have to convince him to try each of the drugs. "You okay, Stevie?"

"Huh?"

"You look like you're either gonna pass out or start a fight, and I'm not ready to deal with either of those situations right now. Are you both always this unstable?" Tony looked pretty drained from having to deal with Bucky's sudden panic attack, and Steve felt bad for dragging him into their mess. He didn't respond and Tony opened his mouth to say something else but Bucky beat him to it. 

"So uh... when are we doing this?" Both Steve and Tony stared at him in complete shock and confusion. "What? We don't exactly have a better option do we?"

"I guess not. JARVIS, put in a call to the head of Immunotech."

"Connecting you now, Sir."

"Right, I'll be back in a second, neither of you break anything." Tony said as he got up and walked into his bedroom, grabbing his tablet from a desk as he went by. They listened to the faint sound of him talking in the next room for a few minutes before Bucky shuffled over and leant his head on Steve's shoulder, nuzzling against him until he started stroking his hair. 

"You really are like a dog you know." 

"I'm gonna assume you mean I'm cute and cuddly, and not that I'm a smelly fleabag." 

"Whatever helps you sleep at night." 

"Love you too, jerk." Bucky mumbled, nuzzling against him again. "You okay?"

"You don't have to do this you know."

"Yeah I do." Steve opened his mouth to argue when Tony came back into the room. 

"Okay, so I have some sort of good news, and I have some sort of bad news. The sort of good news is that, if you're game, they can have it sent down to the hospital by tomorrow morning. The sort of bad news is that they're not sure entirely how the treatment will affect the memories you currently have, especially if you're unconscious during the administration." 

"So, I could forget everything?"

"Who knows? You could lose just the last day, you could lose the last month, you're the first person it's been tried on so there's no way of telling." Steve frowned and looked over at Bucky uncertainly, but he had that stubborn look on his face that showed he was determined to go through with it. Tony could obviously see it too, and so didn't try to argue against it. "So I guess I'll see you two tomorrow morning then?" 

"Don't look so worried, Antonia." Bucky grinned and Tony groaned. 

"Of all the things your broken brain could have remembered, it had to be that." He said, shaking his head in disbelief. Bucky just laughed, pushing himself to his feet and patting Tony on the shoulder.

"Just be thankful I remembered you at all." 

***

The rest of the day had passed relatively calmly. Bucky had spent most of it sitting on the couch, scribbling things into a notebook he'd found, and when Steve had asked him what he was writing he'd just shrugged and said "Things I want to remember."  So Steve had just left him to get on with it, trying to enjoy the fact that Bucky seemed relatively calm for now. It wasn't until 11 o'clock that night that Bucky finally started to show any kind of sign that he was nervous. 

Steve had been lying in bed for an hour in the hopes of getting some sleep, but it had been a pretty futile effort so far. He must have been drifting off a little bit though, because he only noticed Bucky was in his bedroom when he felt him climb onto the bed and curl up against his side without saying anything. They both lay there in silence for what felt like ages before Bucky actually said anything. 

"You awake, Stevie?" He murmured, his right arm reaching up and wrapping around Steve's chest. 

"Yeah, you okay?"

"I just... I'm terrified." Steve sat up a little, propping himself up against the headboard and moving his hand up to stroke Bucky's hair. That made him relax a little, and he leant his head into Steve's hand. 

"We should have gone out somewhere tonight, found you some girl to take your mind of things." For some reason that made Bucky crack up, and he lay there laughing for a good five minutes before Steve cleared his throat and gave him a confused look. 

"Steve I... I'm not really into that kind of thing."

"What the hell are you talking about, Bucky, you used to be out pretty much every night."

"Yeah I know that, just not with girls." He said it so casually Steve almost didn't register what he'd just heard. He just sat there not saying anything as he thought back to every story Bucky had ever told him about what girl he'd been with that night, and realised every single one of them had been a lie. "Your silence is concerning, Stevie."

"I... I had no idea you... that you were..."

"I know you didn't, I went out of my way to make sure of it."

"What?" Steve had generally had one rule in his life: that he didn't tell anybody something if Bucky didn't already know about it. And he'd always assumed that Bucky had been the same, so it hurt to find out he'd been making a concerted effort to hide this from him, especially as he was pretty sure Bucky knew how he felt about him. "But you... you knew. You must have known."

"Known what?"

"How I felt."

"That's exactly why I couldn't tell you, Steve." That hit him like a ton of bricks.

"So you just couldn't bring yourself to flat out reject me?" 

"What? No!" Bucky sat up and cupped Steve's face in his hands. It was hard to see much in the darkness, but he could just make out Bucky's eyes looking at him from a few inches away. "Stevie, I was crazy about you. I just... if people found out..."

"So you were just embarrassed about me?"

"Christ why d'you have to twist everything I say?"

"I wasn't twisting it I'm just saying what you're..." Steve was cut off by Bucky pressing their lips together softly. The kiss only lasted a few seconds but it still seemed to knock most of the air out of Steve's lungs. 

"Why would I be embarrassed about you?" Bucky breathed, nuzzling at Steve's nose. 

"You want me to list the reasons?"

"Stevie..." He chuckled and brushed his metal thumb over Steve's cheek. "If any of that crap had bothered me, I never would have been friends with you in the first place."

"Then why push me away?"

"Because it wasn't safe. I mean, people were already beating you up in the streets, and that was just stupid stuff. God knows what they'd have done to you if they actually thought they had a good reason for it. I just... I couldn't risk you getting hurt. That's why I never told you." This time it was Steve who started the kiss. And this time it lasted longer.   
Steve had always imagined Bucky would be a rough kisser who would fight for dominance, but it turned out to be the opposite. He seemed quite happy with Steve being control, parting his lips slightly when Steve grazed his teeth against them, and shifting closer so he could wrap his arms around him properly.   
After a few minutes Steve decided there was too much distance between them and moved his hands down to Bucky's hips, shifting him onto his lap. 

"Didn't know you had it in you, Stevie." Bucky grinned, moaning softly when Steve started kissing down his neck and running his hands down to the hem of his shirt. 

***

Natasha cleared her throat loudly and Steve suddenly became aware of what he was saying, feeling his face go red he looked down at the floor.

"I... uh... there's not really much to add to that." He could hear Clint fighting not to laugh and narrowed his eyes at him. "You did ask."

"You're damn right I did. You owe me $10, Nat."

"How long have you been betting on this?"

"Since she told me you were going out to look for you so called best friend who you had 'even when you had nothing'." Steve shot Nat a glance and she just shrugged. "I don't know why you're so grumpy about it, I mean I was right wasn't I?" 

"That's not the point. Anyway, that's pretty much everything. He's been in the hospital since this morning, Tony said he should wake up in... shit, in ten minutes." He leapt to his feet. "I've... I have to go... Thanks for the girl's night I guess?."

"You want me to drive you?" Nat asked as he started walking to the door. He really didn't want to spend any more time with either of them for a little while after everything he'd just told them, but he knew he was never going to be able to walk down to the hospital in time so he nodded and Nat grabbed her keys, pushing Clint back down when he went to get up. "You can wait here." She said sternly, and Clint seemed to know better than to argue.

They were both quiet for a while in the car, and it wasn't until Nat had flipped through every single radio station and begrudgingly accepted that there was nothing good playing that she started to talk again.

"So, did anything happen this morning?"

"You mean besides me watching my best friend go into a coma?"

"Yes, Steve, besides that."

"Not really. He gave me that notebook he'd been writing in yesterday and told me I wasn't allowed to read it, I just had to make sure I gave it to him if he forgot anything. Then just before he went under he said..." Steve paused and Nat looked over at him expectantly. "He said he loved me... that he had since he was 13. Seemed pretty relieved after that."

"Well who wouldn't? I mean that's, what, 80 years of repressed feelings?" 

Neither of them said anything else for the rest of the journey, and when they pulled up Nat leant over to give him a hug, telling him everything would be fine. Then he got out of the car and almost ran through the doors. He wasn't paying any attention to where he was walking and very nearly collided with Tony, who was walking the opposite way along the corridor and seemed to be paying even less attention.

"Tony? Is he awake?" Tony looked nervous and Steve didn't like it.

"Uh... Yeah, he uh... woke up half an hour ago but..."

"What?! Why didn't you call me?" He tried to push past and get to Bucky's room but Tony blocked off the corridor. 

"Steve, wait a second."

"Get out the way, Stark."

"Steve you really need to listen to me." Tony grabbed him by the shoulders and Steve stopped, his heart was pounding. "Steve... He can't remember anything."


	9. Chapter 9

"What the hell do you mean he can't remember anything?!" Steve didn't know what to do. Part of him wanted to punch Tony right in the face, another part wanted to push past him and get to Bucky, and another part just wanted to collapse on the floor and do nothing.

"I mean, I just spent the last half hour telling him what his name was and why he was strapped to a hospital bed." The guilt was obvious on Tony's face. "I'm really sorry, Steve, I did say they didn't know what effect it would have on his memories and..."

"You just said he could lose the last month, not everything!"

"I said there was no way of knowing what was going to happen." He sighed and tried to put a hand on Steve's shoulder, but he flinched away and wrapped his arms around himself. "Look, maybe you should just go see him. I tried to tell him a little bit about you just know, but seeing as I don't really know the particulars of your relationship it was difficult to know what to tell him."

"So he doesn't remember me?"

"Didn't recognise the name. Maybe it'll be different if he actually sees you." There wasn't very much hope in Tony's voice, but Steve nodded and followed him down the corridor to Bucky's room.

He was sitting cross-legged on the bed when they came in, with several magazines spread out in front of him. It took all the strength Steve had not to run over and wrap his arms around him, but instead he just glanced at Tony uncertainly, who cleared his throat and made Bucky look up at them.

"Tony?"

"Yeah. Good to see your short term memory seems to be holding up." Tony said, smiling warmly and taking a few steps over to the bed. "I brought you a friend." Bucky's eyed flicked over to Steve, looking him up and down and frowning. Steve realised he wasn't doing a very good job of hiding how heartbroken he felt, and did his best to smile.

"This the guy you were telling me about?" He asked, looking back over at Tony who just nodded. "Oh. Uh... hi?"  

"I'll... give you guys a minute." Tony said quietly, squeezing Steve's shoulder as he walked past and giving him a sad smile before closing the door behind him. Bucky was looking at him expectantly so he took a deep breath and walked over, sitting down on the end of the bed.

"Steve, right?" Bucky sounded uncertain, so Steve nodded and looked over at him.

"Yeah, I... I can't think of anything to say."

"Tony said you'd be upset." He said, shuffling forward slightly so they were closer together. "If it's any consolation, you do seem kinda familiar."

"But you don't remember who I am?" Bucky shook his head, giving him an apologetic look.

"I'm really sorry. I'm trying to, I know I know you I just... I can't remember it." He put his head in his hands and sighed. Steve couldn't fight it anymore and he moved across the bed, wrapping his arms around Bucky slowly and kissing the top of his head. Bucky didn't react much other than by letting out a muffled noise that sounded vaguely like "Sorry."  
They sat there like that, neither of them saying anything else, until Tony came back into the room with coffees.

"How are you boys holding up?"

"Is he always this mothering?" Bucky muttered, glancing back over at Steve and smirking. For some reason that was what did it. Steve pushed himself up off the bed and started hurrying out of the door when Tony grabbed his shoulder and raised an eyebrow at him.

"I just need to... just stay with him." He seemed to understand and nodded, letting go of his shoulder and letting him push through the door.  
There was a bathroom a few doors down from Bucky's room that was, thankfully, unlocked, so he locked himself in there and collapsed onto the floor, sobbing uncontrollably into his hands.  
He didn't remember anything. He didn't remember Tony. He didn't remember Steve. He didn't remember anything they'd done in the last month, and that meant he didn't remember that he loved him. Steve pulled Bucky's notebook out of his jacket and looked at the cover, which looked like Bucky had spent more time doodling on rather than actually writing inside. On the front he'd drawn a robot shooting at what looked like a tiger, which had an arrow pointing at it saying 'get Steve to draw this at some point' . He wasn't sure whether that made him feel better or worse.  
He had no idea how long he'd been sitting on the bathroom floor staring at the drawing when he felt his phone buzz in his pocket. Tony's name flashed up on the screen and he frowned.

"Tony I'm about 20 feet away from you, why are you phoning me?"

"You told me to stay with Barnesy. Also I don't cope well with emotional matters so I figured this would be easier. How you holding up?"

"I'm fine."

"You and I have very different definitions of 'fine'."

       "Is he okay?" Steve could hear Bucky faintly down the line.

"Yeah, he's okay. It's been a long few weeks is all." Tony's voice was more distant as he turned away to talk to Bucky.

       "Is he coming back?"

"You can hear this guy right, Rogers?"

"Yeah just... I'll be five minutes."

"I'll start the timer."

Tony hung up before Steve had time to respond, so he just put the phone down and leant back against the door, taking a few deep breaths to calm himself down. He was tempted to look through the notebook and see what kinds of things Bucky had considered too important to forget about. But he'd promised he wouldn't, even if Bucky didn't remember that now. He just prayed there was something in there that he might help jog his memory. Slowly he picked himself up and unlocked the door, heading back to Bucky's room.

"You got any coffee that doesn't taste like complete shit?"

"Hey! I'm doing the best with what I have on offer, and I am not taking a half hour walk into town just because a cybernetic asshole is fussy about his hot beverages."

"He just needs sugar in it." They both turned to look at Steve as he walked in, sitting back on the end of the bed and turning to face Bucky. "You always tried to hide it from everyone, but you can't drink the stuff without putting half a ton of sugar in first."

"Well them, guess I'll go and grab as many packets of sugar as I can carry." Tony grumbled, getting up from the chair he'd been sitting on. "Try not to have another breakdown while I'm gone." He added, patting Steve's shoulder as he walked out. Steve just rolled his eyes and handed Bucky the notebook.

"What is it?"

"You told me you'd written everything you wanted to remember in it. I thought it might help."

"Huh. Wow I'm a crappy artist, what is that? A tiger? A bear? Jesus." Bucky twisted the notebook to different angles, trying to work out what was in the drawing.

"I think that's why you usually got me to draw stuff for you."

"You can draw this? Can you make it look cool? Hang on let me find a blank page." He flipped through the book enthusiastically and tore out a page, handing it over to Steve."Did you do this a lot?"

"I've got whole sketchbooks full of all the stupid stuff you've wanted me to draw."

"Hey, there is nothing stupid about a robot shooting at a tiger-bear." Bucky grinned and Steve shook his head, unable to hold back a laugh. That seemed to make Bucky smile even brighter, and he started looking through the notebook slowly while Steve grabbed a pen from a nearby desk and tried to focus on drawing. "What's so great about green?"

"Huh?"

"Says here that's your favourite colour."

"You wrote that in there?"

"Apparently." Bucky shrugged. "It also has Antonia written in bold. You sure I'm only in here for amnesia and not some form of insanity?" Steve cracked up and Bucky raised an eyebrow at him.

"You'll figure it out."

"Figure what out?" Tony asked, coming back into the room with at least ten packets of sugar cradled in his arms. Bucky stared at Tony for a few seconds, then looked back down at the page again. "You okay, RoboCop?"

"I remember that." Steve looked up again and saw Bucky staring at the notebook, looking deep in concentration.

"You remember what?"

"Antonia."

Tony threw the packets of sugar on the floor and huffed. "You have to be fucking kidding me."


	10. Chapter 10

For the next few months Bucky's memory gradually came back. He decided to use the notebook as a sort of checklist, crossing things off whenever he remembered a memory connected with it.  
They spent another day in hospital so the manufacturers of Xanprophen could monitor his memory retention and apologise profusely to both him and Steve about the effects it had on his old memories. Tony then insisted that they move temporarily into their personalised floor in Stark Tower. When asked why he was doing all this for them he just shrugged and said "I need to make sure you two don't get into any more trouble. Besides, biologically you are the babies of the group, and I'm the oldest so you are my responsibility." Despite this Steve was pretty sure he'd just been getting used to their company and didn't want to admit it.  
Talking to Bucky was difficult for Steve at first. What do you say to somebody who doesn't remember who you are? However one thing Bucky hadn't lost was his complete disregard for personal space, so they spent most of the first week after Bucky's treatment just sitting huddled up, not saying much at all, while Bucky flipped through the notebook for the hundredth time and Steve stroked his hair.

***

On May 6th, 9 days after Bucky came out of hospital, they had their first real conversation in what felt like forever.

"I remember falling." Bucky mumbled quietly, not looking up from the book he was reading. "You were there then. I remember seeing you."

"When did you remember that?"

"This morning. Apparently pancakes cause me to suddenly relive near death experiences." Steve chuckled and Bucky closed the book, tossing it across the couch and turning to look up at him.

"Probably best to lay off them then."

"I would rather die a thousand deaths than never eat a pancake again, Stevie." Hearing Bucky call him that made Steve tense up slightly, but he didn't seem to notice. "It's the first time I've remembered something about you. I mean, I remember you, kind of. I just... I don't know." He sighed and leant back against Steve's arm, which had been resting on the back of the couch.

"Well you remembered something, so maybe it'll start coming back now?"

"Yeah. At least I know for sure now you're not just some creep who's trying to convince me we're best friends."

"Don't be so sure."

"Punk."

"Jerk."

***

Steve could only refuse Clint and Natasha so many times. So on May 14th, Bucky got to meet them both. Clint had immediately punched Bucky jokingly on the arm and warned him that if he tried to kill Nat again he'd break both his legs, which Bucky seemed to take as a challenge and the pair of them spent most of the day competing with each other in various skill training activities and games. More often than not, Bucky won, but Clint thrashed him in target practice and, as it turns out, could play a mean game of Jenga.

"So, how are you holding up?" Nat asked, putting down her coffee mug and turning to face Steve.

"Me?" She nodded. "I'm fine. Why would I..."

"I did not come here to watch two overgrown five year olds play board games and listen to you talk crap. Tell me how you're feeling." Steve sighed and glanced over at Bucky, who was in the middle of a heated argument with Clint over what was and wasn't an acceptable work to play in Scrabble.

"I may not be from this century, but I still know damn well that asshat isn't in the dictionary."

"Sure it is. Right next to a picture of your ugly mug."

"I'm gonna shove these letters so far up your ass you'll be shitting poems for a month."

Steve sighed and turned back to Natasha, who was looking at him expectantly. "He remembers some stuff about me. It's been coming back to him over the last week or so but... I just don't know if it'll ever get back to how it was."

"Have you told him about the night before he went under?"

"No."

"Have you told him about what he said to you that morning?"

"No." She gave him a look and he frowned "I don't want him to feel pressured like that. He always looks guilty as hell when he can't remember something anyway, I don't want to make him feel worse."

"Natasha." They both looked up and saw Clint standing in front of them with his arms folded. "Tell this dickbag over here that exultion is a word."

"Clint, that's not a word."

"Are you kidding me?!"

"I'm deducting ten points for making up a word."

"Shut your whore mouth, Barnes, I never played it. I only considered it."

"You cheated by asking Nat for help."

"That's not cheating, we are a collective unit she's just part of my team." Clint turned back to Nat as if he were awaiting some kind of approval and she just rolled her eyes.

"In that case..." Bucky pushed himself out of his chair and walked over, sitting on Steve's lap and showing him the letters he had. "Help me make a word."

"That's definitely cheating." Clint grumbled, squeezing himself onto the couch next to Nat.

"We're a collective unit, Barton." Bucky grinned and Clint waved his middle finger at him. "He won't be much help anyway, he's hopeless at this kind of stuff." He sat there for a few minutes thinking before suddenly gasping in excitement and pulling his notebook out of his pocket. Steve wasn't able to see much of what Bucky was doing over his shoulder, but he could just about make out him crossing 'Steve sucks at board games - DO NOT PICK HIM FOR YOUR TEAM' off his list before muttering "Why didn't I remember that five minutes ago." To himself.

***

On June 2nd Tony suggested they give Bucky a proper Avengers initiation. Which apparently just involved asking him if he was sticking around, and then inviting everyone over for drinks to celebrate. They even managed to get Thor down, who seemed ecstatic at the prospect of having a new team member, and brought some Asgardian ale along with him. The positive of this was that it was so strong it actually succeeded in getting Steve and Bucky slightly tipsy, the negative was that after about an hour it had knocked everyone else out completely, all except Bruce who politely pointed out that getting him drunk probably wasn't the best idea. Thor had been the last to go under, although Natasha put up a hell of a fight and only passed out 2 or 3 minutes before him. So what had been intended as a party ended up as Steve, Bucky, and Bruce sitting in the middle of the floor surrounded by unconscious superheroes and assassins.

"Should we move him?" Bruce gestured towards Tony, who was draped over the top of a wardrobe, wearing the bottom half of an old iron man suit and snoring loudly. Bucky opened his mouth to say something but instead just started giggling and shook his head. Steve had stopped drinking once Thor had passed out 20 minutes ago, so the effects had pretty much worn off, but Bucky seemed to be enjoying having something that could get him anything close to drunk again and was still going. He leant against Steve's shoulder and nuzzled at him.

"So, about this whole Avengers thing. Are you guys gonna be taking out Hydra anytime soon?"

"You don't have to be a part of that if you don't want to..."

"Like hell I won't, I've been wanting to tear them apart for 70 years. I just have a few people I wanna take personal care of is all." He pulled out his notebook and tipped it upside down so a folded piece of paper fell out of it, which turned out to just contain a list of names. Steve got a chill seeing the list of people that Bucky wanted to kill, especially when he realised he must have been thinking about this from the moment they'd first found him. "I can't remember why I want all of them dead yet. The ones I've circled are the ones I remember." There were 8 or 9 names on the list, and only 3 didn't have circles around them.

"Bucky... I don't know if that's..."

"That one made me kill a kid." He said, ignoring Steve's protest and pointing at one of the names. "Couldn't have been more than 8 years old. Her dad was the main target, but when we located him she was there too, so this dick told me I had to kill her so there was no risk of her becoming a potential threat. I didn't even question it." His eyes darted from Steve to Bruce, waiting for some kind of reaction. They all sat there not knowing what to say. Steve put his arm around Bucky and squeezed his shoulder while Bruce tapped on the edges of his glass awkwardly.

"Sure is one crazy party, huh?" He murmured, making Bucky chuckle as snapped the notebook shut again and shoved it back into his pocket. Bruce turned back to Steve and shrugged. "I think the guy's justified in having a few people on his hitlist." Steve just nodded and squeezed Bucky's shoulder again.

The three of them collectively agreed not to mention it again, and started working on moving the various unconscious bodies around the room into more comfortable sleeping positions, wrapping them up with blankets and pillows despite Bucky's protests that it would be much funnier to lay them all on top of each other and leave them questioning what they'd done in the morning. Bruce headed home after that, because "I really don't want to be around when these guys wake up the next morning.".  
It was also the first night Bucky shared a bed with Steve again. Steve didn't say anything when Bucky walked quietly into the bedroom and curled up against his side, wrapping his arm around his chest like he had the night before he'd forgotten it all.

"I remembered why green's your favourite colour. It was the colour of your mom's eyes." He whispered softly, sighing when Steve started stroking his hair. "Did we ever do this?"

"Yeah. Most of the time it was just 'cause you were scared I was gonna freeze to death in the winter."

"Only most of the time?"

"Well... I mean I don't think that was every gonna be a problem after the serum. But you still... when we were camping overnight you'd come into my tent sometimes. And you'd sometimes come into my room the month before we put you in the coma." 

"Maybe I was scared I was gonna freeze to death instead."

"Yeah... maybe." Steve forced a smile and Bucky yawned, nuzzling at Steve's side.

"Sweet dreams, Stevie."

***

Steve didn't find out that Bucky had remembered when his birthday was until July 4th actually arrived. He hadn't mentioned anything in the morning, and Steve decided to make sure nobody else brought it up in case it made Bucky feel bad. Tony very nearly ruined this when he burst through the elevator doors holding a giant box with a red, white, and blue bow on the top and yelling "Happy bi... Independence Day! Don't give me those raised eyebrows, Barnes, we take it very seriously nowadays. Steve, I brought you your freedom gifts."

"Right. Thanks, Tony." Steve said, shaking his head as Tony mouthed 'sorry' at him. It turned out that Tony's present actually fitted pretty well into his cover up story, as the box had been filled with a variety of American memorabilia ranging from a framed photo of the Statue of Liberty, to star spangled dildos.

"Not sure I wanna know how you guys celebrate the 4th of July these days." Bucky had commented as he and Steve sifted through the contents of the box, cracking up when Tony threw him a cheeky wink.

"Well you boys have been living together here for 3 months now so I figured..." He was interrupted by Steve lobbing a copy of the Kids Guide to American History at his head, which only made Bucky laugh even more. "I'm glad you're already finding a use for everything."

"Hey, Stevie, you should wear this tonight." Steve looked up and saw Bucky holding up a t-shirt with a cartoon depiction of Captain America on the front. "I bet there's some flag underwear in here too... hang on let me set up an outfit for you." He started gathering up some different things and laying them out on the floor to make an outfit that consisted of the t-shirt and underwear, which Tony had indeed included in the package, and a pair of socks, a hat, scarf, sunglasses, and three bracelets that were all printed with the American flag. "You'll look very patriotic."

"I'll look like an asshole."

"Is there really a difference? Besides don't you dress like this half the time anyway?" Bucky pointed at the Captain America t-shirt and smirked when Steve rolled his eyes.

"So, where are you two lovebirds headed tonight?" They both looked back over at Tony and Steve considered chucking something else at his head until he realised he didn't actually know where they were going, it was the first Bucky had mentioned of them going anywhere.

"Thought we'd go see the fireworks." Bucky said hesitantly, looking over at Steve. "Unless you already had plans?"

"No, no that'd be great."

"You guys are adorable." That time Steve threw a rubber ball at Tony's head, which he narrowly dodged and took as his cue to leave.

The rest of the day passed relatively smoothly. Bucky kept disappearing off to different parts of the tower claiming he had errands to run, which gave Steve the opportunity to look at the various messages he'd been sent.  
Bruce had sent him a photo of himself giving a thumbs up next to a load of stationary that had been arranged to spell 'Happy Birthday!'. He had a voicemail from Natasha of her and Clint singing happy birthday, it was only 3 o'clock but they already sounded pretty drunk. Even Fury had sent him a text, but Bucky still had yet to show any sign that he remembered.

Steve had assumed that they would be going into the city for the fireworks, but instead they ended up in a small, secluded park that Bucky had found. For half an hour they didn't say anything, just sat in the grass with Bucky leaning his head on Steve's shoulder. Steve was starting to think they were going to spend the entire evening like then when Bucky nuzzled at his neck and said the same thing he said to Steve on every birthday he could remember.

"Your birthday's a national event, Stevie."

"I... what?" Bucky grinned and shook his head at him as if he were the biggest idiot on the planet.

"I was gonna say something this morning, but I was kind of enjoying watching you struggling not to bring it up." He sat up and grabbed the bag he'd brought out, pulling out a box that had been wrapped up way too nicely for Bucky to have done it himself and handing it to him. "Pepper wrapped it." He confessed, as if he was able to tell exactly what he was thinking. "That woman is a godsend, I tell ya."

"You're unbelievable."  Steve sighed, taking the box and unwrapping it as slowly as he possibly could, enjoying the look of nervous anticipation on Bucky's face. He couldn't fight the smile when he found the camera inside. Bucky had been promising he'd get one since they were kids, but they'd never been able to afford it.

"I know it's kinda stupid. I mean you've probably already got like, fifty now, but I just thought.. I don't know if it's any good.. it was Pepper who ordered it so you can blame her if it sucks.. and in my defence I only remembered about your birthday five days ago so I didn't have much time to prepare otherwise I would've got something..." Before Steve could really think about what he was doing he had wrapped his hand behind Bucky's head and pressed their lips together, cutting him off in his rambling. The kiss ended as suddenly as it had started when Steve suddenly realised what he was doing and pulled away again."Does this mean you like it?" Bucky smirked at him.

"Yeah, I... I love it."

"You're real cute when you're flustered, Rogers."

"You're a jerk." Steve elbowed him lightly in the ribs and Bucky grinned.

"That was just part one. I have something else for you too, it's less exciting." He reached into his jacket and pulled out his notebook, handing it over to Steve who just looked at him in confusion.

"Don't you need this?"

"Not anymore. I remembered everything in there. It's kinda cheesy, but I didn't want to throw it out so I figured you could keep it if you want." Bucky shrugged and shifted himself around so he could lay down and put his head in Steve's lap, smiling when he moved one of his hands to start stroking his hair.  
They both stayed like that, neither of them saying anything as Steve flipped through the notebook, looking at all the things Bucky had considered too important to forget about. Most of it was things like Bucky's favourite foods, places he'd been, places he wanted to go, and other little things. Each thing on the list had been crossed out in various different colour pens, some had been circled before being crossed off which Steve assumed meant Bucky had been specifically trying to remember those ones. As he reached the last page his eyes were drawn to one sentence which had been circled at least ten times before finally being crossed out. He brushed his thumb across Bucky's cheek, who looked like he was about to fall asleep lying there, as he read it a few more times.

~~I'm in love with Steve Rogers.~~

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> wow that was so cheesy I'm ashamed of myself.


End file.
